The Mir Space Station was Russia's greatest space station, and the first modular space station to be assembled in orbit. Commissioned in 1986, the name can be translated from Russian as "peace", "world", and even "village" ...

Boris Morukov, a Russian cosmonaut and doctor who led an extraordinary experiment in which volunteers simulated a flight to Mars while never leaving a Moscow car park, has died at 64, his scientific institute said Friday.

(Phys.org) —Inspired by science fiction, three bowling ball-size free-flying Synchronized Position Hold, Engage, Reorient, Experimental Satellites (SPHERES) have been flying inside the International Space Station since ...

(Phys.org) —You may not recognize it by name, but if you have ever had a child with a diaper rash, that child was likely a host to Candida albicans (C. albicans). This unwelcome "guest" can be hard to control, as it can ...

(Phys.org) —Smart devices – such as tablets and phones – increasingly are an essential part of everyday life on Earth. The same can be said for life off-planet aboard the International Space Station. From astronaut ...

When astronauts launch into space, a microbial entourage follows. And the sheer number of these followers would give celebrities on Twitter a run for their money. The estimate is that normal, healthy adults have ten times ...

(Phys.org) —Colonies of bacteria grown aboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis behaved in ways never before observed on Earth, according to a new NASA-funded study from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York. Recent ...

Imagine visiting Star Fleet headquarters in the 23nd Century and being engulfed by a holodeck journey to a 21st century NASA Space Shuttle; complete with a full sized Hubble Space Telescope – perhaps the important science ...

Space Shuttle Atlantis

Space Shuttle Atlantis (Orbiter Vehicle Designation: OV-104) is one of the three currently operational orbiters in the Space Shuttle fleet of NASA, the space agency of the United States. (The other two are Discovery and Endeavour.) Atlantis was the fourth operational shuttle built. Atlantis is named after a two-masted sailing ship that operated from 1930 to 1966 for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute.

In early 2008, NASA officials decided to keep Atlantis flying until 2010, the projected end of the Shuttle program. This reversed a previous decision to retire Atlantis in 2008.